With a Solid Council Win, Reyna Breaks With a Formidable Patron

Diana Reyna was in her late 20s when she first won a seat on the City Council, backed by her powerful patron, Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, the Brooklyn Democratic leader. Inexperienced and seen as serving an ambitious mentor, her opponents dubbed her “Vito Lopez’s Vanna White.”

But she distanced herself from Mr. Lopez, and by her second term in office, their fights had broken out into the open.

On Thursday, two days after Ms. Reyna won a third term on the Council, soundly beating a challenger backed by Mr. Lopez, her allies said Ms. Reyna’s rebellion meant she would be seen as a true independent, another milestone in her political journey.

Ms. Reyna, 35, reflected on the bitter contest, her voice still hoarse from shouting. “My battle representing my community is now made public,” she said.

In fact, the subtext of the race for City Council the 34th District drew notice long ago, and it read like this: Assemblyman Lopez, motivated in part by his long-running feud with Ms. Reyna, threw his influence behind Maritza Davila, a Democratic district leader. The quarrel seeped into zoning fights and churches: In an unusually forward venture into politics by a religious leader, Nicholas A. DiMarzio, the Roman Catholic bishop of Brooklyn, urged voters, via robocalls, to support Mr. Lopez.

But the assemblyman’s pull was apparently not enough: Ms. Reyna narrowly beat Ms. Davila in the Democratic primary, and she did it again on Tuesday, beating her opponent, who ran on the Working Families Party line, by 25 percentage points.

Martin S. Needleman, who has known Ms. Reyna for more than a decade, said, “She’s grown into a significant player, and she’s clearly no longer waiting for Vito to come back.”

Photo

Diana Reyna won a third term on Tuesday without the backing of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Brooklyn's Democratic leader.Credit
John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

Whether the nature of her victory has real implications for her work on the City Council — or her future — remains to be seen. Ms. Reyna says she is now better equipped for housing battles with the Bloomberg administration. But others said they doubted that it would have a real impact on her power, and wondered where Ms. Reyna would go after her four-year term was up.

The real winners may have been Ms. Reyna’s supporters, who engineered a victory without Mr. Lopez.

Many of those supporters are now counting on her help opposing a planned rezoning of the Broadway Triangle, a 31-acre parcel of land that is the subject of a housing dispute in Williamsburg. They face an uphill battle: The City Council is set to decide the matter this month.

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The plan was a central front in the campaign. In an interview, Mr. Lopez said Ms. Reyna’s opposition to the project was another example of her “undercutting some of the things I do.”

Mr. Lopez said the race had not dented his influence in Brooklyn Democratic politics, noting the strong showing there for the Democratic mayoral candidate, William C. Thompson Jr.

“I’m proud of my role as county leader,” Mr. Lopez said.

But Ms. Reyna’s supporters saw her victory as proof that Mr. Lopez was not invincible. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, who has her own long feud with Mr. Lopez and who campaigned for Ms. Reyna, said: “It exposed his vulnerability. He challenged these activists to take destiny into their own hands.”

Jo Anne Simon, who ran for City Council in a neighboring district but lost the primary to a candidate backed by Mr. Lopez, said Ms. Reyna’s contest had implications for Brooklyn’s already fractured Democrats.

“This was a very divisive season,” she said, citing a “mean-spirited” campaign, and the fact that Mr. Lopez backed a Working Families candidate. “That doesn’t build cohesiveness in the party,” said Ms. Simon, who campaigned for Ms. Reyna.

The divisions were captured in a video featured prominently on Ms. Davila’s Web site. In it, Ms. Davila stands next to Mr. Lopez on the steps of City Hall, the two of them flanked by politicians from Brooklyn. They all work together, Mr. Lopez says. “There’s one link that’s missing,” he adds, referring to Ms. Reyna.

For her part, Ms. Reyna saw no reason for Brooklyn Democrats on the Council to be at odds. “The assemblyman is not a Council member,” she said. “I look forward to working with my colleagues.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2009, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: With a Solid Council Win, Completing a Break With a Formidable Patron. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe